Friday, December 09, 2016

The slight consolation I get as global temperatures keep climbing is that I'm winning my bets on the issue. So how about the same for Trump. I need bets based on what Trump has promised or described, bets that have some objective basis for measurement. I'd like the bets to pay off at the beginning of 2020, so they play some tiny role in the 2020 election (assuming we have one).

Coal seems like an obvious one. Brad Plumer has a good explainer on Trump promising he'll "put our coal miners back to work" and why that's a lie. Clinton at least had a $30b plan to help transition coal workers. Trump's plan is to eliminate environmental regulations - might help the company owners make some money and even slow the loss somewhat, but doesn't help or pay for a transition.

I've got $5,000 that says coal employment at the end of 2019 will be lower than the day Trump is inaugurated. He doesn't have to bring a single job back like he promised, just stop the slide. Actually I'll make it even better - if he keeps the slide to no more than 2% a year on average, 6% total loss, then I'll fork over $5k. (UPDATE: I think it's reasonable to address the optics question that David Appell raises in the comments. I will note the bet premise is that coal workers would be better off if they supported Clinton, although the coal CEOs would not, and betting is a way to demonstrate that prior to the 2020 election. But to avoid any misunderstanding, I've always been open to having my bets directed to charity instead of personal enrichment of the betting parties. Let's make this one's payment directed to charities in coal country - my direction would be for a charity helping transition away from coal, my opponent could choose whatever suitable direction he likes (it's going to be a "he" if it's going to be anybody).)

For Obamacare, I'm trying to think of an objectively-determined outcome to bet over - let's say that if Republicans repeal or repeal/replace Obamacare before the end of 2019, the percentage of Americans with health care coverage through private or governmental plans will drop. Defining this may be a bit difficult - it would have to be something rejected by most Democrats, not a grand deal. It would also have to be more than a fig leaf - I could see Trump and pals making a small change to Obamacare and present it as revolutionary fix. Good outcome, but not a test of Republican versus Democratic policies. So that bet might need an umpire. $5k on offer.

And finally, climate change isn't a hoax. Hard to test that in a short period of a few years with all the variability, but sea level looks like a higher signal-to-noise ratio. Lets make it four years, July 2016 to July 2020, I put up $5k at 2:1 odds that sea levels will be higher at the end. Details TBD.

I'm not betting some anonymous Trumpkin, but will take on somebody serious and real.

277 comments:

I bet employment in the oil and natural gas industry will be higher at year end 2019 than year end 2016. I believe coal will be down, but that's in part because efficiency will increase due to a higher proportion of surface mining. But I limit my bet to 50 thousand Bolivars.

For someone who accepts climate change, and, presumably, the harm it will cast onto many, coal workers and otherwise -- real human beings with skin in the game -- comes across as insensitive -- and the gloating even more.

Taking your ethics from Wall Street isn't very convincing. I hope Eli sees the error of his ways here.

David, It seems a little perverse to say that The Bunny is betting on other people's livelihoods, when what he is offering is a bet that the Person who told these people that they will have jobs turns out to be a shill. This doesn't suggest any lack of sympathy on the part of the Bunny, quite the opposite. I suppose its a matter of interpretation and intention. We have better things to do than criticise ourselves.

I think you have a reasonable argument although I still mostly disagree, and worth addressing in the body of the post there (which I've done). As I've said on previous bets, I'm willing to have the loser pay a charity instead of the winner, so let's make that mandatory in this case.

And FWIW, I hope I lose my climate bets although that's unlikely. Given the reality of climate change, I don't hope I lose this potential bet over coal industry (not for the sake of winning a bet, but because of the larger issues).

I do hope for something better to happen in coal country to replace coal, although I think the best way to help people there would be to increase mobility so people can move to where there are jobs.

You previously blogged about a county in southern Oregon that was falling apart because of the end of logging jobs. I see a similarity there.

Still, still, this is about communication and I daresay all of our traditional means of convincing people about what the Dalai Lama characterizes as the climate emergency have failed. They have failed in the sense that those who hold the greatest historical responsibility for the state of the atmosphere, oceans, and climate, namely, key OECD countries, and especially the United States, do not have governance which takes the problem seriously enough. That seriousness is not only a failure to mitigate through greenhouse gas reductions policy, but also a failure to take the loud knocks of Nature on the door seriously, putting off change again and again and again.. I admit, this might simply be human nature, how we are wired.

Despite the need for Science, Maths, and Engineering professionals to continue to be voices of rationality and consequence, it seems to me that saying things in the same way they've been said since 1965 -- which have not worked -- is counterproductive, even ``insane.'' What will work?

Well, I think we need to listen to the objections we get from those who hear the Science and local predictions about SLR and temperatures ... They are, as Dr Hayhoe suggests, driving down a highway by looking in the rearview mirror. Or, as I say, shooting skeet by aiming at where the skeet is now, rather than where it will be. Or, as I overheard a coastal property owner in Scituate, MA say after their house was flooded for the third time, ``I don't care why this happened, I just want my house fixed and the Town to erect a seawall so it doesn't happen again.'' These are all short-sighted and wrong, but that's what people are looking for, there and in Miami Beach, and in Boston. They don't want to lose property values, even though it is inevitable they will.

So, I see a bet as a new means of talking. I see disengagement, qualified acceptance, and warning as a New Way. I mean that we may need to accept they will not listen but should warn that a natural demonstration is coming, and when it comes, it will be expensive, and we will be less able to afford the mitigation we can afford now.

And what happens if the worst projections of policy in the USA are realized over the next few years? What happens if the geophysical, oceanographic, military, and other assets and instruments related to climate science are deliberately shut down, and even dismantled? (Why? To shut the messenger up.) That would be a tremendous loss for the world, no doubt. Would it be unrecoverable? No, but not without economic pain. What is the response then?

Given these facts and possibilities, I don't think bets of the kind Brian proposed are over the top at all, and may get some more people to listen. After all, from some of their perspectives, they think that climate science is alarmist government-enhancing fiction. A bet might demonstrate earnestness. It certain does with respect to league tables, at least in some popular circles.

Quick look about the graph would indicate that governments under republican presidents are worse in eliminating coal jobs. The amounts derived from the graph would be 44000 against 70000 approximately. As the number of governing years on the graph happens to be equal it can be said Republicans eliminated 2750 coal jobs/year whereas democrats have the number at 4375jobs/year. I'd say you have a good chance of winning this bet.

Coal is very worried. From a presentation (titled "SURVIVAL IS VICTORY: LESSONS FROM THE TOBACCO WARS ") at an annual meeting of the Rocky Mountain Coal Mining Institute:

"There IS a David vs Goliath struggle going on.But Coal is the David

Options for the future- We can pursue the “Cher Strategy”... - go “all-in” with Republicans, hope for abetter Administration in 2016, and then “turn back time.” - We can fight regulation – but can we fight Natural Gas at $2.60/MMBtu?- We can cut a deal while we are still relevant

We are not fighting to maintain 38% of fuel share ofelectricity generation. We are fighting for survival. "

Other quotes I enjoyed:"End the debate on climate change science""Acknowledge that Climate Change is not a market force – and its impact will not be solved by the market"

"It was a sick joke.........people like me working our buns off retraining coal miners for jobs that do not exist. No wonder Hillary got trounced from Kentucky to Pennsylvania."

The dearth of jobs wasn't Hillary's fault.

And her quote is usually truncated, removing its full context:

"Look, we have serious economic problems in many parts of our country. And Roland is absolutely right. Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let's reunite around policies that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these underserved poor communities.

"So for example, I'm the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?

"And we're going to make it clear that we don't want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories.

"Now we've got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don't want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.

"So whether it's coal country or Indian country or poor urban areas, there is a lot of poverty in America. We have gone backwards. We were moving in the right direction. In the '90s, more people were lifted out of poverty than any time in recent history.

"Because of the terrible economic policies of the Bush administration, President Obama was left with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and people fell back into poverty because they lost jobs, they lost homes, they lost opportunities, and hope.

"So I am passionate about this, which is why I have put forward specific plans about how we incentivize more jobs, more investment in poor communities, and put people to work."

Mining and burning coal is a bad idea these days. This is unfortunate for coal miners and the industry at large, but it's the way things are. Arguably, those advocating for more coal are the ones detached from reality.

Sure, any pol who enacts a 'war on coal' is going to go down like a rat sandwich in the coal states, but again, that's just how it is. Doesn't mean HRC is detached from reality either. Just unfortunate, like the miners themselves.

You have to love Russell Seitz. A formidable intellect plus a great sense of humor.

As a non-smoker I need a better way to heat my house.

Given that I live in Florida heating my house is a non-problem...........I do need cheap electricity to keep my family cool:https://bravenewclimate.com/2011/05/15/solar-power-in-florida/https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/electric-power-in-florida/

Gallopingcamel said..."As I said earlier, folks like David Appell are detached from reality. They will never understand the "Little People" who keep them warm and well fed."

For some reason, GC is obsessed with me. Perhaps since I showed he couldn't account for 150 W/m2 missing in his Earth energy budget. (GC is a Skydragon.)

I know all about "little people," growing up in the mountains of Pennsylvania. I grew up in a house with a coal furnace, that my mother got up and shoveled coal into every night at 3 am to keep the house warm. We hung up blankets between the rooms on cold days, and keep to the kitchen. We didn't have a bathroom, just a toilet under the stairs. Me and my dad hauled water from a spring 2 miles up the road when our pipes froze. And we sat in mud in our second basement with a blow torch, trying to get the pipes trawed. We routinely missed 2 week of school because the bus couldn't make it off the mountain during the very snowy '60s.

So don't tell me about "little people." I grew up with them. I was one of them, dumbass.

@David Appell,I have no idea what you mean by "Sky Dragon"......it sounds bad but you will have to explain.

You think you can impress people by calling them names and that is why nobody takes Quark Soup seriously. You could learn a lot from Russell Seitz. While I seldom agree with him he has my respect. One of his most endearing features is that he understands the power of humor.

@BBD,I agree with "Consensus Scientists" when they say that Earth's average temperature is 288 K.

However "Consensus Scientists" say that the average temperature "sans atmosphere" is 255 K which means that the GHE is 33 K.

I disagree with the 255 K number for reasons explained here:https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/extending-a-new-lunar-thermal-model-part-ii-modelling-an-airless-earth/

After 18 months of on line debate I have a bunch of "Consensus Scientists" who agree with me when I say the average temperature of an airless Earth would be:209 K if the surface is regolith (similar to the Moon).234 K if the surface is ice (similar to Enceladus)

Does that make us "Sky Dragons"? I am ready to share my calculations and computer code with anyone who is interested.

If you are interested in bodies with atmospheres you may like this:https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/robinson-and-catling-model-closely-matches-data-for-titans-atmosphere/

Obama's war on coal has been stunningly effective yet I believe that if the government gets out of the way coal and nuclear will grow again.

Here in the real world, where physics works as understood, then advocating for more coal in out of touch with reality. I did mention this in my earlier comment. No problem with nuclear, as not ideologically aligned on the issue of decarbonisation. I just want it to get done as fast and as efficiently as humanly possible.

And it was still fracking that did for coal, not Obama. Like most people who care about the facts, I reject the Trumpian rhetoricthat it was the EPA. The fact that you are peddling that rubbish here - along with alt-science - kills your credibility stone dead.

GC wrote: "Obama's war on coal has been stunningly effective yet I believe that if the government gets out of the way coal and nuclear will grow again."

Before we transition back to coal, can we get some answers?

1) How many more Americans will die prematurely from the dirtier air? 2) How many more asthma attacks on kids < 18 yrs old?3) How much will all this cost Americans? 3a) The US government?4) What will be the increase in acid rain and its impact on northeastern ecosystems?5) Impacts on streams and fish from more mercury pollution?

Here is Obama's declaration of war in 2008 followed by the Daily Caller's analysis of the effect of that war.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpTIhyMa-Nwhttp://dailycaller.com/2016/04/28/the-stunning-effects-of-obamas-war-on-coal-in-one-chart/

I have seen the results of Obama's war on coal. I have worked with hundreds of coal miners who no longer have employment in spite of the huge sums spent retraining them for jobs that don't exist. You say you grew up among the little people.

Shame on you for betraying them by becoming a useful idiot pushing CAGW! The elites you support are robbing the poor through higher energy prices to feed the rich who own the wind turbines and solar farms.

@David Appell,"1) How many more Americans will die prematurely from the dirtier air?"

I lived in London (UK) in the early fifties when thousands of people were dying each year as a result of burning soft coal for heating their homes. Stone buildings were disintegrating owing to acidic rain. The Thames was a stinking sewer with no vertebrate life from Battersea to Greenwich

We reversed that pollution even though we continued to use fossil fuels to heat our homes. My personal contribution was in helping to bring fish back into the Thames by raising "Rainbow Trout" in commercial quantities using Thames water:http://morcombe.net/Senate/Spruyt1.doc

The above letter is 14 years old so we now have better technology for consuming "Nuclear Waste". For example MSRs (Molten Salt Reactors) make it possible to "burn" our 75,000 tonnes of so-called "Nuclear Waste" while generating 100 times more electrical energy than the original fuel rods gave us. David Le Blanc is just one of the many visionaries designing the "Generation IV" fission reactors that can power our industrial civilization for at least 100,000 years.https://youtu.be/Vl2v3sx7t5Y

@BBD,"Here in the real world, where physics works as understood, then advocating for more coal in out of touch with reality."

Please don't get the idea that I am advocating for more coal. I would like to see the USA reestablish its leadership position in "Atoms for Peace" by creating a new Messmer plan based on Generation IV fission reactors. Otherwise the Canadians, Russians, Indians or Chinese will show us how to do it.

In my opinion coal is a competitive technology for generating electricity absent Obama's "War on Coal". That is why I am ready to risk $5,000 of my own money to bet against the wily Eli Rabett.

@BBD,"After 18 months of on line debate and no published paper? Blog science doesn't count."

Blog science counts if it is true. Richard Feynman tells us that a scientific hypothesis is only as good as its ability to explain what is observed:"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong."

As an amateur I don't need to have papers published. However my analysis of the lunar surface temperature confirms published papers such as this one by Ashwin Vavasada (NASA):https://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/lunar-equatorial-surface-temperature_2012.pdf

Like Vavasada I used the Apollo measurements of regolith properties to calculate heat transfer:https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/a-new-lunar-thermal-model-based-on-finite-element-analysis-of-regolith-physical-properties/

If you doubt my calculations, links to the software I used are included in the above blog to enable you to make your own analysis.

@David Appell,Over the last few years I have visited major plants that generate electricity including the following:- CSP (Concentrated Solar Power)- CCGT (Combined Cycle Generating Technology)- Natural gas powered steam turbine- NPP (Nuclear Power Plant)

I wish to visit PV (Photovoltaic) plant and a coal fired station. Can you help me arrange this? While coal is no big deal in Florida it does account for around 5% of our electricity generation:https://diggingintheclay.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/fueltype.png

gallopingcamel said..."If you doubt my calculations, links to the software I used are included in the above blog to enable you to make your own analysis."

It hardly takes a computer program to calculate the average lunar temperature. It can be done with simple integrals, as I did here, getting exactly the right number and the exact right shape of the curve, all based on standard radiative physics:

@David Appell,"GC: You've been advocating for more coal all along here. All without being absolutely unaware of its costs."

You don't see the "Big Picture". It is all about "Reserves" We will use whatever energy source is convenient until the cost gets excessive. The "Industrial Revolution" was driven by coal but it seems we have only a few hundreds of years of reserves left.

When the whale oil ran out kerosene turned out to be a better way for lighting our homes. While oil is a wonderful fuel conventional reserves are unlikely to last more than 100 years.

However we keep finding new sources of fossil fuels such as shale (frakking gas), shale oil and methane clathrates. Each of these is huge compared to conventional oil so they may amount to thousands of years of reserves:https://dailyreckoning.com/oil-shale-reserves/

If no new fossil fuels turn up our reserves will run out in a few thousand years but will it matter given that Thorium can power our industrial civilization for at least another 100,000 years?http://energyfromthorium.com/2015/05/12/dr-rusty-towell-presents-lftr-at-tedxacu/

@David Appell,"Standard climate science says the Earth's average temperature, to first approximation, is 255 K, calculated according to the Stefan-Boltzmann law: TE = [S(1-α)/4σ]1/4"

Your mathematics is impeccable but the 255 K figure is wrong because your Earth is at a constant temperature which would imply a surface that is a thermal superconductor. The surface of an airless Earth would have quite poor thermal conductivity be it ice or regolith.

In your paper you point out that Nikolov & Zeller's calculation of average temperature is wrong and I agree with you. N&Z's equations are exactly correct only for a body that is a perfect insulator.

My calculations do not assume perfect conduction or perfect insulation. Like Ashwin Vasavada I used the thermal properties of regolith as measured by the Apollo missions.

Thus the average temperature of an airless Earth is not 255 K. Here are the more realistic numbers that appeared earlier on this thread:209 K if the surface is regolith (similar to the Moon).234 K if the surface is ice (similar to Enceladus)

In reality, the temperature of the regolith doesn't matter, because it's not what's being calculated, which is the radiative physics of the sunlite side. The regolith is what it is, and not interesting.

@David Appell,"What are the costs of bring coal back to its once-peak levels, in terms of premature deaths, asthma attacks, acid rain and mercury pollution."

This thread is about coal jobs. I contend that the government should not be picking winners and losers. That is something for the "Market" to decide.

When governments pick winners and losers you have "Crony Capitalism" and one scandal after another.

I ask the federal government to stick to its constitutional powers namely:- State Departmnet- Defense Department- Treasury Department- Justice Department

The other 12 departments in Donald Trump's administration are unconstitutional and should be abolished as soon as possible starting with:- Department of Education- Department of Energy- Department of Agriculture

Dr. Larry Arrn is a constitutional scholar. He explains how this should play out for one of those unconstitutional departments:http://www.hillsdale.edu/townhall

@David Appell,"Wrong yet again. 255 K is the average surface temperature. And that doesn't at all apply to the Moon, which was what my calculation was about. (Did you really miss that?)"

Clearly you did not take the time to read the links I provided earlier in this thread. I created a model that agreed with the LRE (Lunar Radiation Experiment) with an RMS error of 0.66 K. I used that model to calculate the average temperature of an airless Earth. Your figure of 255 K is out by at least 21 K!

If you are too lazy to read my posts please don't embarrass yourself by continuing with the absurd 255 K nonsense. Here are the links one more time:https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/a-new-lunar-thermal-model-based-on-finite-element-analysis-of-regolith-physical-properties/https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/extending-a-new-lunar-thermal-model-part-ii-modelling-an-airless-earth/

You clearly don't have a clue what these negative externalities. I could point you to some reports, but you don't care anyway. Just screw the people who have to breathe in smog, coal dust, to the plants and lakes that die under acid rain, to the little kids suffering more asthma attacks.

Have you ever seen a kid with an asthma attack, GC?

Watch one of those, and tell me again how we need to burn more coal. Ghoul.

"Clearly you did not take the time to read the links I provided earlier in this thread. I created a model that agreed with the LRE (Lunar Radiation Experiment) with an RMS error of 0.66 K. I used that model to calculate the average temperature of an airless Earth. Your figure of 255 K is out by at least 21 K!"

My calculation was for the equatorial average, dimwit.

The whole average is just another integral.

And you still comprehend that no one cares about the dark side and conduction through the lunar regolith. It's boring, no interesting physics, and hasn't nothing to do with the real issue, which is radiative physics applied pointwise.

I don't think any of your blog science is going to pass peer review, GC, which is why it it is taken seriously only by such as Tallbloke et al. If you can't see how funny this is I can't really help any further. And you *are* promoting coal and spouting Trumpian rhetoric in the process. Please, don't treat me like an idiot.

gc writes: "I contend that the government should not be picking winners and losers. That is something for the "Market" to decide."

unintelligible fruitcake meme. Well, it is the holiday season;fruitcakes abound.

Every decision we make is "picking a winners and losers". When governments make purchases (pencils, computers, battleships, etc) they are implicitly picking winners and losers.

When governments pass laws or regulations they are picking winners and losers. Just as important *NOT* passing a law or regulation is *ALSO* picking winners and losers.

Sophomoric appeals to "markets" may work in your Ayn Rand book club, but the myth of efficient markets, the myth of rational agents, the myth of RBCs, do not sway reality-based intelligent beings who have actually studied any economics. And, of course, even an intelligent libertarian would tell you that 'perfect' markets include the cost of externalities. Otherwise all beets are off.

We have recently seen just how well markets can fail. YUGENORMOUSLY. Unregulated shadow-banking and financial derivatives were left up to the markets. We have seen the consequences.

Do you even attempt to think any of this through or is it all knee-jerk pablum and memes you've 'learned' from other morons?

GC, so where, precisely, in KY were you? I lived in KY coal country a few years, and I don't remember the coal mines being looked on so fondly. I remember a lot of talk about "broadform deeds" and mountaintop removal and fouled streams and black lung disease and lack of safety. Nostalgia for the days when coal was king...not so much.

Most miners would jump at an alternative to going into the mines. Maybe you were just a lousy trainer and that was the source of their nostalgia.

I don't normally 'do' anecdotal comments as they are unverifiable, but just this once...

My paternal grandfather was the last to work down the pits in his / my family. His future wife made it an absolute condition of accepting his proposal that he came out of the pit. Because she knew that his father and his grandfather had both been killed in pit accidents. As had family members of just about everyone else she knew.

In one of life's ironies, he gave up his job at the colliery and became a fireman. This was Coventry in the late 1930s. During the Coventry Blitz he was inside a damaged factory building when it was hit again by the ongoing bombing and he was badly injured. Severe burns, lost a leg and an eye. His four brothers all saw degrees of action overseas in various branches of the armed services during the war and none received a scratch.

@David Appell'"If you can't get your blog posts published, it's because they are below standard, useless, and can't hack it in the real world."

You don't have a clue about the "Real World" and you know nothing about me. As I have said before you could learn a great deal from Russell Seitz who had no trouble digging up my published papers. Just to give you the tiniest hint here is a link to the world's brightest gamma ray source. This video shows how Inverse Compton Scattering is used to generate gamma rays with energies in the 10 to 100 MeV range:http://www.tunl.duke/edu/web.tunl.2011a.howhigsworks.php

@David Appell,"My calculation was for the equatorial average, dimwit."

You don't even remember where you stole that 255 K number from! Here is a slide by Scott Denning, Montfort Professor of Climate Science at Colorado State:https://diggingintheclay.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/morcombe1.jpg

Even you should realize the calculation does not relate to the equatorial region. Yet another false claim.

@David Appell,That Lacis paper was a fine example of junk science when it was written (2010).

Six years later the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is still rising at an accelerating rate but the global average temperature has not risen in 17 years:http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

Back to Feynman. Your hypothesis that CO2 is the control knob for global temperature is wrong. Now you need to modify your hypothesis or continue to be a laughing stock.

@BBD,"I don't normally 'do' anecdotal comments as they are unverifiable, but just this once..."

Back in 1958 I was an apprentice at the GEC Telephone Works in Coventry and played for the Coventry RFC as right wing three-quarter as back up to Peter Jackson:https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/mar/27/guardianobituaries.rugbyunion

I forgot to mention that my moniker (Gallopingcamel) was awarded to me in the early 1960s in recognition of my graceful running style on the Rugby field. I would have preferred to be called the "Gazelle".

@Kevin O'Neill,Your faith in the wisdom of governments is misplaced. Governments love "Targeted Incentives (aka slush funds). Thus the Obama regime was able to reward its supporters such as Solyndra. There were much larger scandals that were not reported in the "Main Stream Media".

For example Next Era Energy received $1.7 billion.https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/wp-admin/comment.php?action=editcomment&c=5507

There is a way to stimulate economic growth that does not involve "Targeted Incentive" corruption. When you reduce corporate taxation all profitable companies benefit. I pointed this out 14 years ago and am gratified that the North Carolina legislature followed my recommendations:http://morcombe.net/Senate/Jobs.htm

Government incentives in the European Union created "Butter Mountains" and "Wine Lakes".

Here in the USA the Archer Daniel Midlands lobby created the ethanol from corn scam with consequences that have been felt across the world. This scam was a major factor in the "Arab Spring".

The trouble with government intervention in "Markets" is "Unintended Consequences" so let us hope that Trump will stop all subsidies:http://www.thegwpf.com/chris-edwards-time-to-end-all-energy-subsidies/

"Six years later the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is still rising at an accelerating rate but the global average temperature has not risen in 17 years."

Oo, this hackneyed old canard again. Woohoo! I am sure that you will be keen to test this scientifically, and arrive at the truth of the matter.

First, having made such a statement of certainty, you much surely be able to supply your working? Pretty please, with cherries on top.

Second, I am sure that you understand the part played by short-term variability superimposed over trends, so can you please let us know what you understand the short-term variability to be in the global temperature trajectory for, say, the last century? If the thought of applying a non-linear regression is a bit too daunting for you, it would be sufficient to use just the last half-century and fit a simple linear regresssion.

Third, now that you have calculated the short-term variability of the residuals around the regression above, can you explain the significance of the magnitude of this variability when one is considering subintervals of time (that is, shorter periods selected from the whole data set that you used for the previous exercise) when referring to overall trends? (Hint: is it possible to have underlying warming when you have statistical insignificance in the trajectory over a subinterval?)

Fourth, now that you are (hopefully) armed with the answers from above, can you now explain the error in your original statement?

You don't have a clue about the "Real World" and you know nothing about me. As I have said before you could learn a great deal from Russell Seitz who had no trouble digging up my published papers.

The unwritten, unpublished paper you need to produce is the one in which you overturn the current understanding of atmospheric physics.

Pretending this is about other papers you have published within your own field is almost insultingly disingenuous.

As for the no warming in 17 years claim... you need to do better than wave a broken synthetic TLT product around and make unjustifiably strong claims about 'warming'. Do please remember that the climate system is mostly ocean and misrepresenting it as the troposphere while ignoring OHC is a no-no. I'll leave it there so you can answer Bernard J's specific questions.

GC wrote:"You don't even remember where you stole that 255 K number from! Here is a slide by Scott Denning, Montfort Professor of Climate Science at Colorado State:https://diggingintheclay.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/morcombe1.jpg"

255 K is the brightness temperture of the Earth, a simple application of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation.

"Even you should realize the calculation does not relate to the equatorial region. Yet another false claim."

@David Appell,"A graphic isn't a published paper (even after you correct its URL)."

Dead right, yet very few papers are worth what that video shows. I spent many years building and operating the Duke HIGS. Typically a facility like that lasts ~20 years before you run out of tasks for it. The HIGS started in 1994 and it is already 22 years old with the prospect of doing useful research for at least another 10 years. Let us hope this link works better than the last one I sent you:http://www.tunl.duke.edu/web.tunl.2011a.higs.php

So what can you do with a bright gamma ray source? Remember your chemistry teacher showing how photons from a magnesium flare could trigger a chemical reaction (e.g hydrogen/oxygen)? With energetic gamma rays you can trigger nuclear reactions such as the CNO processes that are occurring within the sun.

There are dozens of relevant papers but most are behind paywalls. If you are interested (which I sincerely doubt) here is a link to one of them.http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/504613/

BBD, don't waste your time looking up GC's "debate." His opposition to the Lacis et al paper had absolutely no science in it, just the usual blather about "pal review" and the like. He wouldn't accept that the greenhouse effect on Mars is 5 K. Or that Venus can't have a huge climate forcing because Venus has clouds. He forgot that Venus's clouds aren't water, but sulfur dioxide. And needless to say, water clouds on Earth don't preclude its greenhouse effect either.

It's the same there as here -- GC throws out a bunch of misunderstanding with no science or papers behind them, then can't defend them when asked.

BBD, don't waste your time looking up GC's "debate." His opposition to the Lacis et al paper had absolutely no science in it, just the usual blather

So I saw when I skimmed the thread GC linked linked to. The same on which you put in a good deal of effort in the face of some pretty blatant disingenuity.

But that's denial for you, isn't it? At its core, it is fundamentally dishonest. There is always a point at which the contrarian *must* realise that whatever they are peddling is bollocks and yet they persist.

Thanks BBD. You're right; that's denialism. I honestly don't understand it.... You'd think that even people with some scientific training, like GC says he has, would have been taught to be skeptical of everything, and how to understand the difference between good science and flaky science/pseudoscience.

On another forum I ran into a hard core denier who clearly didn't know anything. I asked her is she had ever taken 20 minutes to learn the evidence for AGW. Got name calling back. I asked her is there was something else driving her denialism -- afraid gas prices might go up? Don't want to help poor countries with the problems we're creating? Meaningless answer. I think it's become almost tribal, like Trump's cabinet choices -- denial is necessary to be a part of that tribe. Except, unexpectly, Rex Tillerson (though his thoughts about the subject aren't very impressive, either).

@BBD,"I'd pay good money to see you take this crap to Science of Doom though. You'd be eviscerated."

I really like "Science of Doom" and regret that it has is less active than it was a few years ago.

What little I know about "Climate Science" came from DeWitt Payne and Leonard Weinstein at SOD. While there were some excellent debates there was no "eviscerating" going on. While I may occasionally disagree with DeWitt Payne, Leonard Weinstein, Russell Seitz, Barry Brooks and Scott Denning these people are high in my esteem because they debate like grown ups.

Here is an example of what I mean:https://scienceofdoom.com/2010/06/12/venusian-mysteries/

DeWitt Payne introduced me to the excellent treatise by Rodrigo Caballero at Trinity College, Dublin. Sadly the link he provided does not seem to work any more.

Then there is this:https://scienceofdoom.com/2014/08/12/the-atmosphere-cools-to-space-by-co2-and-water-vapor-so-more-ghgs-more-cooling/

My efforts to use engineering software (Finite Element Analysis) to model Venus have failed so far. My goal is to improve the Robinson-Catling model by adding cloud layers:http://faculty.washington.edu/dcatling/Robinson2014_0.1bar_Tropopause.pdf

You raised the SOD issue so I hope you will enjoy what you asked for.

Please note that I am not the one name calling or making personal attacks. Debate the issues and you may earn my respect.

Bernard J,It would be a waste of time to debate global warming with anyone who does not understand that the surface station record at NASA/GISS and NOAA/GHCN is unreliable.

I met Tom Peterson before he retired and he personally gave me a copy of the GHCN v3 data. As I already had a copy of the v2 data I later asked him to explain why the v3 "cooled the past" and "warmed recent years". I got no adequate explanation along with Ross McKittrick and Steve Goddard:https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/dorothy-behind-the-curtain-part-1/https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/dorothy-behind-the-curtain-part-2/

If you can discuss recent warming in terms of the UAH or RSS satellite records I will take you seriously.

My apologies to the learned Eli for straying "Off Topic" by engaging some of your less rational supporters. This thread was about fossil fuels and particularly coal so let us get back to that.

It seems likely that the incoming Trump administration will remove restrictions that affect the exploitation of domestic energy sources......so the Keystone pipeline will happen. ANWAR licenses will not be blocked. States will be allowed to decide whether to develop energy reserves or not. The idea that "Carbon Mitigation" will save the planet from "Catastrophic Global Warming" will join absurd fantasies like the "Holy Grail".

The interesting question posed here is whether the the coal industry will recover if the federal government's "War on Coal" is abandoned. Some argue that cheap and clean natural gas hurts the coal industry far more than Obama has.

Brian Schmidt has offered to back up his opinion by betting $5,000 on the assertion that the coal industry will not recover by the end of Trump's first term. I respect someone who will put his money where his mouth is more than a thousand yapping Appells.

If I take up Brian's bet it will not be to make money as Brian and I have already agreed to donate our winnings to charity. I don't know what Brian's motive is but my motive is to draw attention to the plight of the many Kentucky coal miners I have met. While donating $5,000 to a coal miner charity won't make much difference it may generate publicity that may be more valuable.http://www.wymt.com/content/news/New-Fiber-Optics-class-added-to-BSCTC-program-365489971.html

I had never visited Kentucky until last year when I started training coal miners. These are wonderful people who deserve much better from their government. I have also developed an appreciation for Woodford Reserve.

For the last 850,000 years [CO2] has correlated closely with global temperature in the Antarctic:https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-dog-that-did-not-bark/

This striking correlations shows that temperature drives [CO2]. The idea that [CO2] drives temperature is false.

Some of you don't seem to comprehend the EPICA papers in the above link so here are a couple of graphs covering the last 18 years. First the average temperature according to the RSS satellite:http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1998

Now look at the Mauna Loa CO2 measurements over the same period:http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1998

Some of you claim that CO2 drives temperature. These two graphs show that is nonsense at least since 1998.

If you can find any time period where [CO2] drives temperature please share it with me.

"It would be a waste of time to debate global warming with anyone who does not understand that the surface station record at NASA/GISS and NOAA/GHCN is unreliable."

But how then do you know that there's been no warming for the last 17 years, if the data are "unreliable"?

And the answers to the questions I posed are robust to adjustments of data in the datasets, so how do you know that these datasets are in fact unsuitable to be used in responding to my questions?

And if you don't like GISS or GHCN use another dataset.

And the answers are relevant to any analysis that leads to the statement you made, so why won't you answer them regardless?

Heck, you don't even need to come up with actual numerical values to answer the questions: algebraic references will suffice. Don't you know how to frame the answers algebraically?

Or are you so scared of facing some home truths about making statements of significance in ordinal values in a time series that you're not able to take up the cudgel? Are you nurturing your ideology and afraid to lose your belief in the equivalent of a tooth fairy? Or are you worried that going down this path will inevtiably lead you to acknowledging the shortcomings of your erroneous claim, in full view of your denialist chums?

Often times when warming is natural. (But not during the PETM.) But certainly not when independent agents (PEOPLE) are burning fossil fuels and dumping the CO2 waste into the atmosphere as fast as they can. Then CO2 leads.

This is so obvious and well known that I actually think you just trying to get a rise out of us. The comedy of looking at just 18-yr graphs makes it even more so.

PS: The glacial-interglacial temperature difference would only be about 2/3rds as much but for the additional natural warming caused the released natural CO2.

More diversions and evasions and no answers. Boring denier rhetorical tricks.

* * *

What little I know about "Climate Science" came from DeWitt Payne and Leonard Weinstein at SOD. While there were some excellent debates there was no "eviscerating" going on. While I may occasionally disagree with DeWitt Payne, Leonard Weinstein, Russell Seitz, Barry Brooks and Scott Denning these people are high in my esteem because they debate like grown ups.

Tone trolling exacerbated by the fact that *you* don't debate 'like a grown-up'. You are evasive and insubstantial when challenged. And while you may hold DeWitt Payne in high esteem, the respect is not reciprocated:

I find GC’s posts boring and irrelevant. When I see six replies at once, it’s a sign that it’s not worth reading them. So I don’t.

The late Pekka Pirilä, Frank and SoD all thought you were spouting crap too (along with Scott Denning elsewhere, of course).

You raised the SOD issue so I hope you will enjoy what you asked for.

I knew what I was getting before I asked, so this time around the fun was the bit where you get caught implicitly misrepresenting your credibility again.

Some of you don't seem to comprehend the EPICA papers in the above link

Don't use palaeoclimate as a sandbox for your denialism. It will end badly. Here is an accessible summary of what you don't know (eg. Pedro et al. 2012; Parrenin et al. 2013). You need to get up to date.

All I asked was for one of you to show a period where CO2 appears to drive temperature but you could not do it.

David Appell mentioned the PETM so here is a reconstruction of ocean temperatures at high latitudes over the past 60 million years:https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/65_Myr_Climate_Change.png/450px-65_Myr_Climate_Change.png

Note that during the PETM polar oceans were 15 K warmer than in recent times and alligators roamed where Spitzbergen is today.

Does anyone here claim that CO2 drove temperature over the last 60 million years? If so please share your calculations.

The truth is that we live in an Ice Age. If humans have the power to affect the climate as you seem to imagine we should choose to raise temperatures rather than lower them.http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf

"Global climate warming from the late Palaeocene through earlyEocene was punctuated by several transient hyperthermal events.The most prominent of these events, the PETM, was characterizedby a 5 -8 C temperature increase, a 3 -6 mill negative carbon isotopeexcursion (CIE), and profound shifts in biotic communities. ThePETM CIE reflects a massive release of 13C-depleted carbon to theocean -atmosphere system at the event's onset."

Your plot shows the fractional change in O18. O18/O16 is a proxy for temperature, not for carbon release. Your plot only shows temperature change, not its relation to carbon releases.

"The truth is that we live in an Ice Age."

And look low atmospheric CO2 is now relative to most of the past hundreds of millions of years. That's not a coincidence.

"If humans have the power to affect the climate as you seem to imagine we should choose to raise temperatures rather than lower them."

Just your opinion. In any case, changing climate this fast is insane. It's not about the climate per se, it's about the RAPID PACE of the change and whether organisms can keep up with that change. And we already know that in past episodes of climate change, many did not.

Note that the change during the PETM was 5-8 C over a few thousand years, or ~0.03 C/decade. The climate is now changing at least 5 times that rate, and climate change is only getting started.

@BBD,Thank you for the Parrenin et al link. which appears to supplement the papers that I cited in "The Dog That Did Not Bark".

I was not able to obtain the full text of the paper because it is behind a pay wall but the abstract contains this statement:"Studies of polar ice cores have concluded that temperature increases during periods of rapid warming have preceded increases in CO2 by hundreds of years."

This is consistent with the earlier EPICA papers (Jouzel et al, 2007 and Luethi et al, 2008) which show that [CO2} leads temperature by hundreds of years. These are the papers I cited here:https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-dog-that-did-not-bark/

If there is anything in the papers you linked that refutes the above post please explain.

GC wrote:"David Appell mentioned the PETM so here is a reconstruction of ocean temperatures at high latitudes over the past 60 million years:https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/65_Myr_Climate_Change.png/450px-65_Myr_Climate_Change.png"

What is YOUR explanation for the PETM temperature spike, if you claim it's not due to a massive carbon pulse?

Does anyone here claim that CO2 drove temperature over the last 60 million years? If so please share your calculations.

Of course it did. Without CO2 forcing change, it's impossible to explain the general Cenozoic cooling trend from the peak Eocene hothouse ~50Ma to the Pleistocene glaciations. See eg. Hansen & Sato (2012) (emphasis added):

CO2 is the principal forcing that caused the slow Cenozoic climate trends. The total amount of CO2 in surface carbon reservoirs (atmosphere, ocean, soil, biosphere) changes over millions of years due to imbalance of the volcanic source and weathering sink, and changes of the amount of carbon buried in organic matter. CO2 is also a principal factor in the short-term climate oscillations that are so apparent in parts (b) and (c) of Fig. 1. However, in these glacial-interglacial oscillations atmospheric CO2 operates as a feedback: total CO2 in the surface reservoirs changes little on these shorter time scales, but the distribution of CO2 among the surface reservoirs changes as climate changes. As the ocean warms, for example, it releases CO2 to the atmosphere, providing an amplifying climate feedback that causes further warming.

The fact that CO2 is the dominant cause of long-term Cenozoic climate trends is obvious Earth's energy budget. Redistribution of energy in the climate system via changes of atmosphere or ocean dynamics cannot cause such huge climate change. Instead a substantial global climate forcing is required. The climate forcing must be due to a change of energy coming into the planet or changes within the atmosphere or on the surface that alter the planet's energy budget.

Solar luminosity is increasing on long time scales, as our sun is at an early stage of solar evolution, "burning" hydrogen, forming helium by nuclear fusion, slowly getting brighter. The sun's brightness increased steadily through the Cenozoic, by about 0.4 percent according to solar physics models (Sackmann et al., 1993). Because Earth absorbs about 240 W/m2 of solar energy, the 0.4 percent increase is a forcing of about 1 W/m2. This small linear increase of forcing, by itself, would have caused a modest global warming through the Cenozoic Era.

Continent locations affect Earth's energy balance, as ocean and continent albedos differ. However, most continents were near their present latitudes by the early Cenozoic (Blakey, 2008; Fig. S9 of Hansen et al., 2008). Cloud and atmosphere shielding limit the effect of surface albedo change (Hansen et al., 2005), so this surface climate forcing did not exceed about 1 W/m2.

In contrast, atmospheric CO2 during the Cenozoic changed from about 1000 ppm in the early Cenozoic (Beerling and Royer, 2011) to as small as 170 ppm during recent ice ages (Luthi et al., 2008). The resulting climate forcing, which can be computed accurately for this CO2 range using formulae in Table 1 of Hansen et al. (2000), exceeds 10 W/m2. CO2 was clearly the dominant climate forcing in the Cenozoic.

Of course the PETM was CO2 forced. This is well understood. Denying stuff like this is simply idiotic.

As for the relationship between CO2 and temperature during the last deglaciation RTFR properly. CO2 is a feedback to orbital forcing but tightening up the ice core chronolgies makes the supposed lag pretty much vanish within the horizon of uncertainty. Others pointed out straight away that this ancient (and stupid) denier meme is simply a confusion over the way CO2 (and CH4) respond as *feedbacks* to orbital forcing changes.

Stop using palaeoclimate as a sandbox for your denial. It will eat you. There is *nothing* in palaeoclimate behaviour that gives comfort to deniers and a great deal that totally undermines their nonsense. The PETM being an excellent example. We can talk about it in much greater detail if you like. I would enjoy that, but you won't.

I was not able to obtain the full text of the paper because it is behind a pay wall but the abstract contains this statement:"Studies of polar ice cores have concluded that temperature increases during periods of rapid warming have preceded increases in CO2 by hundreds of years."

This is consistent with the earlier EPICA papers (Jouzel et al, 2007 and Luethi et al, 2008) which show that [CO2} leads temperature by hundreds of years. These are the papers I cited here: [link to denier blog removed].

If there is anything in the papers you linked that refutes the above post please explain.

You what? 'Explain'? How about we just restore the sentence you clipped out to its proper context:

Changes in the concentration of atmospheric CO2 and surface air temperature are closely related. However, temperature can influence atmospheric CO2 as well as be influenced by it. Studies of polar ice cores have concluded that temperature increases during periods of rapid warming have preceded increases in CO2 by hundreds of years. Parrenin et al. (p. 1060; see the Perspective by Brook) present a revised age scale for the atmospheric component of Antarctic ice cores, based on the isotopic composition of the N2 that they contain, and suggest that temperature and CO2 changed synchronously over four intervals of rapid warming during the last deglaciation.

You could not have missed that the whole point of P13 is that improving the core chronology causes the supposed 'lag' to disappear. It says so, in the sentence following the one you clipped out. I can't believe you did this.

The fact that you resorted to such crass, dishonest trickery shows that you *know* you have lost the argument but will do anything, however underhand, to try and pretend otherwise.

@BBD,You picked up on the phrase "temperature and CO2 changed synchronously".

From the EPICA papers one can see a stunning correlation between [CO2] and temperature. The time resolution is "Decadal" which means that lags of hundreds of years are clearly resolved and that is why we know temperature leads [CO2].

In the real world cause precedes effect so if [CO2] lags temperature by hundreds of years it would be irrational to claim that CO2 drives the glacial cycles. In spite of the excellent correlation between CO2 and temperature in the Luethi & Jouzel papers, the authors do not claim that CO2 drives temperature and that is the point of "The Dog That Did Not Bark".

In the case of the PETM we don't have "Decadal" resolution so we don't know if temperature leads CO2 or vice versa. I tried to explain the PETM in terms of pressure variations caused by an increased partial pressure of oxygen. This triggered a lengthy debate with David Appell and eventually I had to agree with him and admit my oxygen theory was wrong:https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2013/02/16/unified-theory-of-climate-revisited/#comment-5131

Ned Nikolov had a different theory that he was submitting for publication. While I am aware of his theory I can't comment further as the information was provided in confidence. AFAIK the Nikolov theory has not been published even though three years have elapsed since we discussed the PETM.

@David Appell,"What is YOUR explanation for the PETM temperature spike, if you claim it's not due to a massive carbon pulse?"

As you are well aware my hypothesis for explaining the PETM was wrong. As of now I don't have a good hypothesis and I remain skeptical about the massive carbon pulse idea for a number of reasons which I would be happy to share with you. However, the answer to your question is "I don't have an explanation for the PETM".

GC wrote:"As you are well aware my hypothesis for explaining the PETM was wrong. As of now I don't have a good hypothesis and I remain skeptical about the massive carbon pulse idea for a number of reasons which I would be happy to share with you."

@BBD,"You could not have missed that the whole point of P13 is that improving the core chronology causes the supposed 'lag' to disappear. It says so, in the sentence following the one you clipped out. I can't believe you did this. "

Finally you answered one of my questions. I think you are saying that Parrenin disagrees with Luethi & Jouzel when they say temperature leads [CO2] by hundreds of years. If that is correct why not say so instead of throwing a hissy fit?

I would need to read the papers you cited to comment further. After that I like to follow up by contacting the leading researchers and then meet them face to face. This approach did not work with Luethi & Jouzel. When I contacted Thomas F. Stocker & Jay Severinhaus they "Lawyered Up". Maybe I will have better luck with Parrenin.

@David Appell,"So we can dispense with the deceitful Ned Nikolov, whose "predictions" were always wrong anyway, when the predictions of standard radiative physics were always right:"

You are just like the "Main Stream Media". You live in an upside down world.

Here is a convective-radiative model that works pretty well:http://faculty.washington.edu/dcatling/Robinson2014_0.1bar_Tropopause.pdfhttps://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2014/04/27/robinson-and-catling-model-closely-matches-data-for-titans-atmosphere/

Please desist with the character assassination. Do you have even one achievement that would suggest your opinion is worth anything?

You must be proud of that slanderous attack on Roger Tattersal because you keep on posting it. While you correctly cite the lunar temperatures as measured by the Diviner LRE the (correct) equations you cite won't come close to reproducing curves that match observations.

Even though the equations are good you are not using the correct physical values to characterize the Moon's surface properties. Just to take one simple example you say the Moon has an albedo of 0.11. Total BS! The Moon is non-Lambertian so its albedo is quite complex. Any calculation you make that ignores this fact can't correctly model the Moon's surface temperature. Clearly you did not bother to read my analysis:https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/a-new-lunar-thermal-model-based-on-finite-element-analysis-of-regolith-physical-properties/https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/extending-a-new-lunar-thermal-model-part-ii-modelling-an-airless-earth/

I would be happy to share my computer code with you but given your irrational reaction to Tallbloke & this camel I won't hold my breath.

GC - If you aren't aware of Zeller and Nikorov's attempt to publish under fake names, by spelling their names backwards, now is definitely the time to learn. They were fundamently dishonest and, by this, have lost any and all respect.

Their numbers were always all wrong too. And their magnitude for the greenhouse effect was laughable.

Standard physics describes the Moon very well, as I have already proved.

From the EPICA papers one can see a stunning correlation between [CO2] and temperature. The time resolution is "Decadal" which means that lags of hundreds of years are clearly resolved and that is why we know temperature leads [CO2].

In the real world cause precedes effect so if [CO2] lags temperature by hundreds of years it would be irrational to claim that CO2 drives the glacial cycles. In spite of the excellent correlation between CO2 and temperature in the Luethi & Jouzel papers, the authors do not claim that CO2 drives temperature and that is the point of "The Dog That Did Not Bark".

More evasions, this time in the form of a tired old straw man. Nobody claims that 'CO2 drives glacial cycles'. They are ascribed to orbital dynamics with CO2 (and CH4) operating as feedbacks. I explained this clearly in my previous comment but *still* you push this diversionary nonsense. Dishonest.

The rest was simply to point out that you are woefully out of date still to be talking about centennial lags between CO2 and Antarctic temperature. As I explained and you are *still* trying to avoid having to acknowledge, the supposed lag disappears when the ice core chronologies are tightened up. Dishonest.

However, the answer to your question is "I don't have an explanation for the PETM".

But one exists. It was forced by a major perturbation of the carbon cycle. This is well understood. The fact that you pretend not to understand it is irrelevant to the actual knowledge. Dishonest.

If that is correct why not say so instead of throwing a hissy fit?

I was irritated by the transparently dishonest way you quote-mined the abstract then pretended that it did not flatly contradict your obsolete denier talking point. And you have now doubled down on that, proving beyond doubt that you are thoroughly dishonest.

I would need to read the papers you cited to comment further.

Then get off your lazy denier arse and read. This will get you started: Parrenin et al. (2013) (full text, found in ~5 second search; you either lied or didn't bother looking very hard). Right at the beginning, the authors save you the bother of actually reading the whole thing:

One Sentence Summary: A new chronology shows that changes in atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic temperature were synchronous during the last deglacial warming.

Now you have to acknowledge that you were wrong.

After that I like to follow up by contacting the leading researchers and then meet them face to face.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In which the cornered denier sets impossible standards for being convinced. The usual tedious, dishonest crap.

But in all the obfuscatory rhetoric, not a single word about the relationship between CO2 and Cenozoic climate.

GC writes: "After that I like to follow up by contacting the leading researchers and then meet them face to face."

LOL! Are you for real? I read climate papers from researchers in a dozen different countries. In the US alone I'd have to travel from one end of the continent to the other - with numerous stops in between.

This may be the most ludicrous climateball strategy ever devised; the corollary of course is that dead scientists' work doesn't count because we can't interrogate them face-to-face.

@Kevin O'Neil,"LOL! Are you for real? I read climate papers from researchers in a dozen different countries. In the US alone I'd have to travel from one end of the continent to the other - with numerous stops in between. "

I take the trouble to meet with researchers. A few of them were colleagues but most are not. People will tell you things in a face to face meeting that you could never find out via email. When direct contact is not possible I use phone or email. Here is an example that involved meeting several people at NOAA who then gave me some leads on questions they could not answer:https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/dorothy-behind-the-curtain-part-1/

For the sake of argument suppose Parrenin is right and CO2 leads temperature throughout the last 850,000 years. So why does Parrenin "Fail to Bark" just as Luethi and Jouzel did a decade earlier?

Here is the relevant comment from "The Dog That Did Not Bark":

Fig 2. uses the same data as Fig 1. but only the last 2,500 years are displayed. If “Climate Scientists” had used the EPICA data to vindicate Arrhenius they would need to explain why the Keeling Curve Hockey Stick (CO2 concentration) did not produce the expected 8 K temperature rise in the last 160 years. The actual “Global Warming” since 1850 was only 0.8 K, an order of magnitude less than than the EPICA data suggests.

Unanswered Questions

To make the calculated data in Fig 1 (red plot) agree with the measured data (blue plot) I had to set the sensitivity constant to 16 K/Doubling of CO2, whereas to make the modern data fit (1850 to 2013) observations the sensitivity constant needs to be 1.6 K/Doubling. Who can believe that the sensitivity constant remained at 16 K/Doubling for 800,000 years and then suddenly changed to 1.6 K/Doubling in 1850?

Suppose Arrhenius was right and the glaciations over the last 800,000+ years were driven by [CO2]. So what caused the concentration of CO2 to change? It must have been some "Natural Cause" since humans burning fossil fuels was not a significant factor until 150 years ago.

If you can answer my question you should be able to predict when the next glaciation will start.

GC: "People will tell you things in a face to face meeting that you could never find out via email."

Ah, unverifiable claims of special knowledge. And yet you have brought nothing to the discussion but the standard denialist claims that are so shallow they can be dealt with in a few paragraphs at skepticalscience.

Really, GC, is this the best you can do?

GC, I actually lived in Kentucky coal country. Taught there. They don't love coal as much as you seem to want to believe. Many of them would jump at the chance to make a living in a way that didn't threaten their lives.

"On several occasions here I have cited satellite data from RSS and UAH. Here is the latest plot from UAH:"

Three points.

1) The satellite data are not measuring only surface temperature, and the corrections to the data thus far are not reflecting the ground-truthing that we can confirm empirically. Also, the temperature response of the atmosphere at altitude is not expected to be the same as that at the surface, and the results observed are consisgent with expectations.

2) We don't live in orbit around the planet; nor do most of us live at appreciable altitude.

3) The satellite data are far more manipulated than any set of surface data, and your problem seems to be with the alteration of data. And a part of the reason for the manipulation of the satellite data is that they are fraught with errors and other measurement gremlins... yet you trust them more than the evidence of multiple independent analogue instrumentations, or the evidence of the biosphere and cryosphere...

Going back to my original postings here I note that you have assiduously avoided answering my straightforward questions about the statistical grounding underpinning the making of a claim about significance of trends in a data set over short periods of time. Why?

And related to this you haven't commented about my observation that this year is the warmest year in the modern record, therefore the planet must by very definition be warming. Can you explain why you won't respond to this?

Fig 2. uses the same data as Fig 1. but only the last 2,500 years are displayed. If “Climate Scientists” had used the EPICA data to vindicate Arrhenius they would need to explain why the Keeling Curve Hockey Stick (CO2 concentration) did not produce the expected 8 K temperature rise in the last 160 years. The actual “Global Warming” since 1850 was only 0.8 K, an order of magnitude less than than the EPICA data suggests.

Unanswered Questions

Daft questions. Because feedback from CO2 was only one of the radiative terms involved in deglaciation. You need to factor in albedo change and you, uh, forgot. Problem is, you don't understand the topic so you keep ending up with your foot in your mouth.

The altered boundary conditions that maintained the climate change between these two periods had to be changes on Earth's surface and changes of long-lived atmospheric constituents, because the incoming solar energy does not change much in 20,000 years. Changes of long-lived GHGs are known accurately for the past 800,000 years from Antarctic ice core data (Luthi et al., 2008; Loulergue et al., 2008). Climate forcings due to GHG and surface albedo changes between the LGM and Holocene were approximately 3 and 3.5 W/m2, respectively, with largest uncertainty (±1 W/m2) in the surface change (ice sheet area, vegetation distribution, shoreline movement) due to uncertainty in ice sheet sizes (Hansen et al., 1984; Hewitt and Mitchell, 1997).

Global mean temperature change between the LGM and Holocene has been estimated from paleo temperature data and from climate models constrained by paleo data. [...] We take 5 ± 1°C as our best estimate. Although the estimated uncertainty is necessarily partly subjective, we believe it is a generous (large) estimate for 1σ uncertainty.

The empirical fast-feedback climate sensitivity that we infer from the LGM-Holocene comparison is thus 5°C/6.5 W/m2 ~ ¾ ± ¼ °C per W/m2 or 3 ± 1°C for doubled CO2. The fact that ice sheet and GHG boundary conditions are actually slow climate feedbacks is irrelevant for the purpose of evaluating the fast-feedback climate sensitivity.

* * *

Suppose Arrhenius was right and the glaciations over the last 800,000+ years were driven by [CO2]. So what caused the concentration of CO2 to change? It must have been some "Natural Cause"

As I *keep on* explaining to you, CO2 and CH4 respond as feedbacks to orbital forcing. Since you are clearly in need of a clue, here's how it works (after Shakun et al. 2012):

Yes, I understand. Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller used pseudonyms to hide their real identites.

Why? Because the junk science they published online had so soiled their reputations -- deservedly so -- that that was the only way they preceived publishing to be possible. Apparently it never occurred to them that they could have, instead, published a paper with correct science in a legitimate journal under their real names.

"We adopted pseudonyms as a measure of last resort as we could not get an unbiased and fair review from scientific journals under our real names."https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2016/09/25/ned-nikolov-in-science-new-messages-mean-more-than-the-messengers-names/

That's what reality deniers always -- "no one will publish our crappy science! The system is rigged."

@Brian,It was my intent to leave the good folks here in peace but at your request I freely acknowledge that you have changed my mind with regard to prospects of job growth in the coal industry over the next four years.

While I have no doubt that Donald Trump will try to relieve the coal industry from onerous, job killing regulations it will not be enough to offset the effect of other factors such as improved productivity and competition from natural gas. Then there is an even more important issue that will affect the price of coal in markets where natural gas is not an alternative:http://www.thegwpf.com/china-boost-coal-production-ends-price-rally/

In the spirit of the season, thanks for offering to skip the gloating.

@Bernard J,I was not going to comment any more but you come across as logical and reasonable so perhaps we can converse politely.

You seem to regard the satellite record as unreliable whereas I find problems with NOAA/GHCN and NASA/GISS.

My approach is to access the raw data and then address questions to the people who control it. I have not done that with the satellite data although I do communicate with Roy Spencer. I have not had any direct contact with the staff at RSS to date. Thus I can't agree or disagree with your comments on the satellite record from direct knowledge.

I have taken the trouble to look at the NOAA/GHCN raw data versions v2 and v3. These data sets and the corresponding ones from NASA/GISS don't agree which prompted Richard Lindzen to tell the British House of Parliament:"We may not be able to predict the future, but in climate ‘science,’ we also can’t predict the past."

These data sets have been manipulated. How do you justify "Cooling the Past"? Recent years have been warmed even though most of the ground stations that survive are subject to UHI (Urban Heat Islands).

I met with Tom Peterson and several of his staff in Asheville to find out what was going on. I started out as a believer but they turned me into a skeptic. Here are a couple of links that relate:https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/dorothy-behind-the-curtain-part-1/https://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/dorothy-behind-the-curtain-part-2/

I got some help from Albert Klein Tank (DNMI), several scientists at DMI and Richard Alley at Penn State.

I can tell you unequivocally that nobody I met at GHCN could explain the differences between the v2 and v3 data sets. Steven Goddard calls this fraud and I agree with him:http://realclimatescience.com/2016/12/more-spectacular-arctic-temperature-fraud-from-noaanasa/

Tony Heller (Steve Goddard) has hundreds of presentations like this. I selected this one because I have personally checked the recent Greenland temperatures using DMI data as well as NOAA/GHCN.

Tony Heller is right. NOAA cooled the past and warmed recent years. Thus far they have no explanation for their adjustments. If you don't believe me I can send you the data sets to enable you to make your own assessment. All you will need is an Excel spreadsheet.

GC wrote:"My approach is to access the raw data and then address questions to the people who control it."

Ever thought of reading their papers?

"I have not done that with the satellite data although I do communicate with Roy Spencer.

Satellites don't record temperatures. They record microwaves, and then a complex model calculates temperature anomalies from them. (At this point I think UAH is trying to calibrate over seven or eight different satellites.) UAH won't share their code with anyone.

"I have taken the trouble to look at the NOAA/GHCN raw data versions v2 and v3. These data sets and the corresponding ones from NASA/GISS"

They each built their own model, so there is no reason for them to agree exactly. But here are their 30-yr GMST trends (no autocorrelation; 2-sigma error):

GISS: 0.18 +/- 0.02 C/decadeNOAA: 0.17 +/- 0.01 C/decade

"Thus far they have no explanation for their adjustments."

Absurd. Read their papers. Read Karl et al Science 2015 and the papers it refers to. Read the excellent Scott Johnson article I cited above. Read Zeke Hausfather's explanations at Judith Curry's blog a year or two ago, especially about the Time of Observation bias.

The issue of satellite versus surface dataset is not what I'm asking you about, and as I said earlier the statistical mechanics of the questions I posed are robust to the relatively minor differences resulting from (valid) adjustments. Reiterating claims about satellite over surface is just a straw man stratagem to focus on one dataset over another.

To recap the story, you said that "[s]ix years later the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is still rising at an accelerating rate but the global average temperature has not risen in 17 years." The questions that I posed to you were intended to delve into the statistical steps that you (or others) employed to arrive at that conclusion. Those questions were structured in such a way as to get to a statement of your understanding of the parameters required to make the claim that you did. I even presented them so that you didn't need to arrive under your own steam to an identification of the parameters, but to merely give a quantification of them and thus to comment in their significance.

Perhaps I need to be more explicit. To be able to make the claim that you did that "the global average temperature has not risen in 17 years", regardless of the dataset being used, one needs to have a handle on (1) the short-term, year-to-year 'noise' in the data. One also needs to know (2) the mean rate of change of the underlying warming trend that one is considering, and with these two pieces of information one can then arrive at (3) a minimum period of time required before a statistically significant trend can be identified.

I was curious to know how your claim of "no warming" stacks against the statistical power of the data to demonstrate a signal amongst the noise for short periods of consideration.

A more sophisticated consideration would acknowledge how minimum spans of time going back from any arbitrary reference year in the dataset(s) are affected by the noise in the preceding years, and by the underlying trend(s) at that time, but that is a nut to crack in further delvings once the basic averages are dealt with.

So, again, are you able to derive the value for the short-term variabilities in the datasets, and to compare them to the values(s) of the underlying warming trends in the datasets, and thence to derive values for the minimum periods of time before which one can identify a warming signal? And once you've done so, can you compare this to the comment that you made above?

I also posed from a different perspective the questions in the preceding process, by saying "2016 is warmer than any year in the modern global temperature record. Ergo, it's warming." This is trivially the case, but a truly sceptical participant would challenge the conclusion using exactly the arguments I've intimated above. Many denialists of global warming do make such protestations, but tellingly they never dig into the statistical nuts and bolts in order to say how many years preceding even a record warm year would be necessary before the trend can be identified with 95% confidence. I suspect that the motivation for such is that doing so leads directly to the conclusions that warming can never be identified for X years before even the most recent hottest year ever in the contemporary dataset. And with this concession acknowledged one can then not make any claims about pauses or hiatus, because doing so requires one to ignore that statistical underpinnings necessary to arrive at such conclusions.

And finally, if for whatever reason might be the case you are not able to derive the values to which I allude, why would you believe that anyone would attach any credibility to the claim that you make about no warming for 17 years?

GC, yes, I am trying to be as polite as I possibly can because I am hoping that you might be the first of those people who disavow the science, to respond and defend the statements of no warming for the last y years. I'm particularly curious to see if someone can, under their own steam, work through the relatively simple statistics, and then defend the claim of a pause.

To date, despite having followed this strategem for more times than I can possibly count, I have never encountered even a single denier of the science who has shown the slightest inclination to confront the statistical basis of a claim of no warming. I'm hoping that you might be the first.

Looking at just a decade of temperature change is meaningless to considerations of climate change. There is simply too much noise.

Absolutely nothing about the science says temperatures must increase monotonically with CO2. Deniers pretend not to understand this, then use their pretend misunderstanding it to mislead others.

When science does't go as expected, there are two things to consider: are the observed data right? Is the theory right?

In this case, besides the ridiculous of looking at too-short time intervals, the observed data were also wrong. A closer look resulted in the Karl et al 2015 changes that showed no significant pause, and so superseded Hansen's earlier comment.

The observed data are often wrong. Best example was UAH LT in the late 1990s/early 2000s, when the data indicated cooling. Turns out their data model was wrong (sign error), which they resisted ever step of the way until it became impossible.

I remember 10 years ago when deniers thought there was a pause. Suddenly all the observed data were again good enough to use (remember surfacestations.org and the like?). When a closer look at the observation methodology found the need for changes, suddenly the observed data wasn't good enough again. Completely hypocritial -- but that's how deniers are.

"Experimentalists will be surprised to learn that we will not accept any evidence that is not confirmed by theory."- Arthur Eddinton

The whole concept of a 'pause' has been twisted by denier rhetoric. I've already said this on the thread, but it bears repeating:

The climate system is not the troposphere

It's mostly ocean. But when the denier wittering starts up, suddenly the Earth's energy balance is happening solely in the troposphere.

This is, of course, complete bollocks. The whole thing is a mix of misrepresentation and misdirection that seeks to conceal the fact that OHC for the 0 - 2000m layer kept on increasing relentlessly. When you look at the climate system as a whole as you should, to avoid misunderstandings, there was no pause at all.

Various things affect tropospheric temperature on the scale of a decade or two. For example, transient variability in the rate of ocean heat uptake modulates tropospheric temperatures. Boring climate system fact. It doesn't mean a damn thing about the validity of the scientific understanding of radiative physics or climate sensitivity so contrarians should stop pretending that it does.

Colour me stupid but no, actually, I don't see. Perhaps you could answer the questions that I put to gallopingcamel in order to help me to see.

Can you do that Tom Fuller? Answer a few simple questions? You're obviously a very smart person, so I am keenly interested in your take on each of the questions that I put to GC, just as I am still keenly interested to hear GC's responses.

"And it was a bit of a shock to many in the climate science community, despite the fact that there were two similar pauses in the 20th Century."

If you're talking about the data since the 1998 El Niño, there have been many more than two* so-called "pauses" of that nature. If you can answer the questions I put, you can also explain why this is so, and why the claim of pausing is completely spurious.

Contrast with the mid 20th century pause, which is actually a Thing in the data, and which is also explicable with straightforward physics consistent with human-caused (ie, CO₂-induced) global warming. If you're unfamiliar with the components of the post-WWII 'pause', they include aerosol forcing, CO₂ emissions curtailing, and alterations in the methdology for measuring ocean temperature. These all contributed to the apparent flattening of temperature. And further analyses of the period indicate that whilst day-time temperatures in the mid 20th century did not detectably increase, night time temperatures continued to follow a warming trajectory (at ~0.11 °C per decade, IIRC) which absolutely concords with the physics of both CO₂ and aerosol forcings as they were acting at the time.

So when the various "pauses" are dissected with scientific objectivity, Tom Fuller, it becomes apparent that there is in fact no pause at all that is not ENTIRELY consistent with the pattern of human emissions and with the science of 'greenhouse' gas forcing. The bottom line is that humans are emitting CO₂, that this gas increases retention of heat by the atmosphere, and that the best estimate of climate sensitivity to this process is still around 3.0 °C per doubling of the pre-Industrial Revolution atmospheric concentration. The kicker is that our global society will not cope with the consequences of a doubling of CO₂: the biosphere and planetary ecosystem functions as we know them and which we rely on will certainly not cope with a CO₂ doubling.

But let's not be side-tracked by the serious consequences of warming the planet, Tom Fuller. Let's stay focused on simply identifying pauses, which has been the point all along of my questioning on this thread. You're a subscriber to the notion of temperature trend pauses, so I will reiterate those questions again...

1) What is the short-term variability (the 'noise') in the global temperature records?

2) What is the underlying warming trend (the 'signal') in the modern global temperature trajectory?

3) Using the understanding from 1) and 2), what is the average minimum period of time required to identify, with statistical significance, warming at any arbitrary point in the modern global temperature time-series (that is, how long does it take to see a signal emerge from noise)?

4) Can you give even a rough indication of how the characteristics of the 'noise' in the temperature record at particular points in the time series might alter the average minimum period of time required to identify, with statistical significance, warming at those points in the modern global temperature time-series?

5) Using the responses to 4) and 5), can you explain why the claims of pauses over the last several decades are all spurious, and reflect nothing more than a misrepresentation, a misunderstanding and/or an ignorance of the statistical characteristics of datasets that contain a signal with superimposed noise?

There you have it. A handful of simple questions, relevant to the issue of identifying pauses. As I said you're apparently a smart man, so you should have no difficulty in responding with alacrity. And for bonus points and the admiration of the thread, if you disagree with the elements that I've listed as being germane to identifying 'pauses', perhaps you could detail the scientific/statistical bases of your objections.

We'd all be keenly interested.

CODA:

Whilst the numerical values to the questions I've put are relevant to the discussion, reference to the statistical processes employed are important too, especially if they're put in general algebraic terms so that they could be applied to whichever dataset you, gallopingcamel, or any other proponent of 'pauses' might choose to select. Therefore credibility would be enhanced if the answers to the questions above were couched with a description of the general processes used to derive them.

Thank you all for a stimulating discussion. Brian has persuaded me that employment in the coal industry is unlikely to rise in the next four years.

Much of the discussion here has been "Off Topic" relating to issues such as the "Pause", the average temperature of an airless Earth and the effect of CO2 on temperature. On these issues I don't see anyone changing position.

Even though nobody was persuaded I don't see the discussion as a waste of time. The winner is Eli Rabett who runs a class blog without intrusive "Moderation" (aka censorship).

Thank you Eli for allowing this camel to poke his nose inside your tent.

"Much of the discussion here has been "Off Topic" relating to issues such as the "Pause", the average temperature of an airless Earth and the effect of CO2 on temperature."

As David Appell noted, you raised the issue of the 'pause', and you thought enough about it reference it in subsequent posts. It's an important thing to get a handle on, even if it's not directly related to the original post, because it's used as the basis for much of the denialist memery.

My questions are simple, and at their very essence ask "on what statistical basis are you identifying a pause?" You've not yet answered the questions, which is troubling given that you were enthusiastic in making your claim about a pause in the first place. Are you, by your silence on the request for validation of your claim, implying that you don't have confidence that you claim can stand scrutiny?

I'm very curious to know why you've avoided addressing these questions, just as I am curious about the answers themselves. I'm also curious as to why Tom Fuller has posted elsewhere on Rabbet Run since engaging with the 'pause' issue himself, but has seen fit to skirt around any substantiation of his support for the claim of a pause.

What is so difficult about these straightforward questions that not a single contrarian has attempted to answer (or even acknowledge) them to date?

I'm more than open to changing my position on the existence of a pause, if you can substantiate such with reference to the statistical parameters that define it. I've repeatedly challenged you to do so, and it's a relatively simple exercise as the statistical concepts required are not at all onerous.

Similarly, I would expect that for your own edification you'd be prepared to engage with an investigation of these parameters, using your own nous rather than relying on me to make statements of fact for you. And if in addressing the statistical basis for defining a pause you happened to understand that the original claim is unsupportable, I'd expect that you'd reconsider your own position of adhering to the meme.

You've made a claim, as has Tom Fuller now in echo. I'm simply saying on what basis do you so make this claim? To date it seems that the answer is "no basis at all."

I respect mainstream science. When a mainstream scientist like James Hansen says temperatures stalled for a decade.

"OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.” http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions

BBD, we have similar opinions of each other. The difference is that I don't ask you to do stuff after I insult you.

It was Bernard J who asked first. Never mind your opinion of me; it is irrelevant. Back to the question then:

But let's not be side-tracked by the serious consequences of warming the planet, Tom Fuller. Let's stay focused on simply identifying pauses, which has been the point all along of my questioning on this thread. You're a subscriber to the notion of temperature trend pauses, so I will reiterate those questions again...

1) What is the short-term variability (the 'noise') in the global temperature records?

2) What is the underlying warming trend (the 'signal') in the modern global temperature trajectory?

3) Using the understanding from 1) and 2), what is the average minimum period of time required to identify, with statistical significance, warming at any arbitrary point in the modern global temperature time-series (that is, how long does it take to see a signal emerge from noise)?

4) Can you give even a rough indication of how the characteristics of the 'noise' in the temperature record at particular points in the time series might alter the average minimum period of time required to identify, with statistical significance, warming at those points in the modern global temperature time-series?

5) Using the responses to 4) and 5), can you explain why the claims of pauses over the last several decades are all spurious, and reflect nothing more than a misrepresentation, a misunderstanding and/or an ignorance of the statistical characteristics of datasets that contain a signal with superimposed noise?

There you have it. A handful of simple questions, relevant to the issue of identifying pauses. As I said you're apparently a smart man, so you should have no difficulty in responding with alacrity. And for bonus points and the admiration of the thread, if you disagree with the elements that I've listed as being germane to identifying 'pauses', perhaps you could detail the scientific/statistical bases of your objections.

"...the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade..."

There are so many issues with yur quotation of Hansen that it's difficult to know where to start.

From a general perspective, the Economist's review of the science is tainted with their inherent antipathy against acknowledging the implications of human-caused global warming, and there are many people amongst the thousands of comments posted that note their selective interpretation of the subject.

Further, Hansen's comment is taken out of its context, both by the Economist and by you. This is the full paragraph of what he said in the beginning of the summary of temperatures to 2012:

"Global surface temperature in 2012 was +0.56°C (1°F) warmer than the 1951-1980 base period average, despite much of the year being affected by a strong La Nina. Global temperature thus continues at a high level that is sufficient to cause a substantial increase in the frequency of extreme warm anomalies. The 5-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade, which we interpret as a combination of natural variability and a slowdown in the growth rate of the net climate forcing."

We'll get back to the mention of "variability" in a minute...

It's highly significant that the period described is bounded by the extreme 1998 El Niño at the beginning and the La Niña in 2012. As the significance of this appears to be escaping you, this results in a high positive residual at the beginning of the time period, and an extreme low residual at the end. Taking a subset of data such as this from a longer-term set is an example of going down the up escalator: it skews the manner in which a truly representative underlying trend line is fitted. I don't presume to understand the authors' reason(s) for considering this length of time in making their summary, but there is no mathematical strength in doing so.

If I were to speculate I would surmise that perhaps Hansen et al were buckling to the heavy denialist pressure from the ad nauseum repeated meme of a pause, but if so they were falling victim to the same short-coming of trusting one's eyeballs rather than trusting the strength of mathematical analysis of the data. And if Hansen et al did focus on the 15 year period because of the widespread promulgation of this invalid meme, then their vulnerability to the pressure doesn't give the existence of a 'pause' any credibility.

However... if one reads the latter part of the report one will find this:

"The more important factor in the standstill is probably unforced dynamical variability, essentially climatic "noise".

Indeed, the current stand-still of the 5-year running mean global temperature may be largely a consequence of the fact that the first half of the past 10 years had predominately El Nino conditions, while the second half had predominately La Nina conditions (Nino index in Fig. 1). Comparing the global temperature at the time of the most recent three La Ninas (1999-2000, 2008, and 2011-2012), it is apparent that global temperature has continued to rise between recent years of comparable tropical temperature, indeed, at a rate of warming similar to that of the previous three decades. We conclude that background global warming is continuing, consistent with the known planetary energy imbalance, even though it is likely that the slowdown in climate forcing growth rate contributed to the recent apparent standstill in global temperature."

So, despite their participation in the consideration of a pause, they are indicating that as things were in 2012 its apparent existence is mostly likely "noise", and that planetary warming continues. This was also touched on in their mention of "variability" in the first paragraph: so this aspect was always a part of their commentary, and it is selective quoting that removes it from discussion in order to misrepresent their intended import.

The subsequent collection of four more years of data is germane to this discussion, because the last three years have each been sequentially record-warmest years. When added to the overall dataset it becomes irrefutably apparent that warming never stopped, and that the noise in the contemporary global temperature dataset is simply a reflection of (pseudo-)random variation in the allocation of heat to different partitions in the planetary climate system. A statistical analysis of the data would have indicated this, and in fact many of us pointed this out: nto only did I and others comment to this effect time and again over the last half a decade or so, but Tamino and Skeptical Science for instance have repeatedly provided detailed explanations of the invalidity of claiming a 'pause'.

Which brings me back to my questions. They are based on three parameters required to identify a signal from noise, and are intended to demonstrate whether a proponent of a 'pause' actually understands the real, physical/mathematical existence of a 'pause' in the global temperature dataset. They're not difficult questions. They're not trick questions. Anyone who can do a regression and some basic variability analysis can come up with approximate numbers by way of answer (issues of autocorrelation aside) sufficient to make the point about what period of time is required to identify existing trends, and conversely whether there have been any actual pauses in the underlying trend.

I could give you the answers myself, but I want you to 'own' the results of the questions, and the implications of these answers. Is that why you refuse to step to the plate and participate? Do you know that by correctly answering them yourself you will effectively refute your own claim of a 'pause'? That should come as no surprise, because my last question is exactly that: to explain how the answers to the derivation of the three parameters mentioned invalidates the claims of a pause.

Tom Fuller (and galloping camel), these questions are an exercise that first year university statistics student could answer in about 10 minutes, starting from scratch. My pedagogical approach with students is to have them answers questions wherever possible, and to interpret their results themselves as much as possible, with only my guidance to indicate where they might be going awry. This facilitates a much more powerful process of real understanding than occurs if one simply tells people the end result, and it is especially useful in challenging people to face and discard their preconceptions when they've been shown to be incorrect. Of course, this requires the participation of the student - your refusal to engage indicates to me that you're not interested in the truth, but in clutching the false meme to your chest for all that you're worth.

Engaging with you is like interrogating an early iteration of Siri to fine out whether it has any native intelligence (it didn't), and the answers that you provide aren't much different to many of Siri's, although at least it admits when it doesn't understand a question or chooses not to answer it...

So, are you going to justify your devotion to this canard about a 'pause'? Are you going to prove that it is in fact correct by answering my questions and refuting my insistence that it is a false interpretation of the data? Or are you going to be the intellectual coward that you've always been and persist with any and all avoidance of the merest sign of an actual objective analysis of the data?

BJ, engaging with you is about as attractive a proposition as bathing in petroleum jelly mixed with coal dust. If you want to 'engage' with someone go over to Deltoid. That's about your speed.

Go ahead and make some more pathetic excuses for what Hansen said. Hansen at least can face reality.

"The current stand-still of the 5-year running mean global temperature may be largely a consequence of the facr [sic] that the first half of the past 10 years had predominantly El Nino conditions, and the second half had predominantly La Nina conditions.

The approximate stand-still of global temperature during 1940-1975 is generally attributed to an approximate balance of aerosol cooling and greenhouse gas warming during a period of rapid growth of fossil fuel use with little control on particulate air pollution, but quantitative interpretation has been impossible because of the absence of adequate aerosol measurements."

If I'm "making excuses" for Hansen then you should be able to demolish me by actually addressing the statistical rigour of the claim of a pause. So demolish me with the wrecking ball of physics. Crucify me on the cross of statistics. Hang me from the gallows of parsimony, draw me with the horses of logic, and quarter me to the cardinal points of your rapier insight.

Turn my questions against me by addressing them, so that they betray the scientific inadequacies of my assertion that my claim of no 'pause' is itself nothing but hocum. Use numbers, and the laws of nature, and inplacable objectivity, to show the world that warming has indeed paused, that the last three sequentially record-warm years are in no way an indication that the planet is heating as a result of human emissions of fossil carbon.

Demolish me. Scientifically. But please show your working...

If the proposition of engaging with me is as unattractive as you assert, it must surely be because the fact of doing so will force you to face the fact that your argument in support of a 'pause' in warming is completely bogus horse-shit. I can actually understand and sympathise with your cowardice, your fear of losing the comfort of a fantastical ideology that inures you to the harsh truths of reality and of the laws-of-physics precipice to which humanity is hurtling with obstinate disregard for its own future or for that of the rest of the biosphere in which we dwell. Ignoring all that and then subsequently having to admit its existence would indeed be likely to cause you to soil your breeches, so it's no wonder that you run like a bride on the night she was press-ganged into marriage with a troll.

But man up. Stop being a little boy whose only defences are logical fallacy and wiflu ignorance, and prove that you actually know something about the things you deign to promulgate.

Oh, and we're all watching your current writhings with great amusement.

Appel, of course I acknowledge new data. Almost daily. (Sundays I often sleep in.) The pause is either over or paused itself. I predicted it would last two decades and that warming would then resume. It looks like I was optimistic and that the pause won't last that long.

I wrote a couple of years ago that pretending the pause hadn't happened was both completely foolish and completely typical of the Brigati Verde.

I also suggested a better tactic. By noting that a number of natural forcings had turned negative without pushing temperatures down, you could actually strengthen the case for a warming world.

But I guess you lot had better things to do--No Pressure Videos, photoshopping polar bears, calling James Hansen, Barack Obama and Andrew Revkin deniers--all things that have done so much to advance your cause.

Given that you have peddled the 'no warming since 2000 but lots of CO2 emissions' meme until it is threadbare you have some explaining to do. In fact you are the first person I remember actually waving that meme about. Perhaps you even invented it, not that it really matters now. You certainly pushed it just as hard as you could. So, you and your fellow climate liars have claimed incessantly that climate noise *is* the anthro signal and therefore sensitivity must be low. Flat-out wrong.

So where is your apology for this this campaign of misinformation?

And please stop confusing physical climatology with 'the greens'. It's a tedious old trick of yours that fools nobody but irritates everyone.

1/ Wrong terminology: a slowdown in the rate of surface warming is neither a 'pause' nor a 'hiatus' both of which imply temporary cessation. This did not occur

2/ Nobody ever said that natural variability would stop because of AGW

3/ Natural variability in tropospheric temperature is not the anthropogenic signal

4/ The troposphere is only a small part of the climate system - most of it is ocean

5/ OHC in the 0 - 2000m layer kept rising during the slowdown in surface (tropospheric) warming so the accumulation of energy in the climate system carried on unchecked during the so-called "pause"

6/ The noise isn't the signal unless you are a contrarian misinformer. I know this came up at (3) but the error defines those who make it and bears repeating

7/ Short term natural variability in tropospheric temperature cannot be used to make strong claims about equilibrium sensitivity or arguably even TCR so pretending that it somehow invalidates the canonical central estimates is on a spectrum spanning from wrong to dishonest

8/ All you *can* infer from the fact that the climate system is noisy is that it is relatively sensitive to radiative perturbation on all timescales

Not only do you lose the argument, you stand revealed as the worst kind of liar: one who cannot defend their rubbish when challenged but instead keeps on repeating what they must know is misinformation.

It's like... it's like you're trying to convince yourself... and not quite succeeding. Your bluster has always had a tinge of self doubt, as if your rote memorization of certain aspects of the climate war (very similar to a child memorizing the dates of important battles of the past) was never enough.

BBD, you seem to get some kind of satisfaction out of telling people what to do. Since telling yourself what to do hasn't worked out so well for you, I'm puzzled that you would be so eager to take on the responsibility for others.

BBD, you wrote, "Given that you have peddled the 'no warming since 2000 but lots of CO2 emissions' meme until it is threadbare you have some explaining to do. In fact you are the first person I remember actually waving that meme about. Perhaps you even invented it, not that it really matters now."

In fact, I believe I was the first to note that CDIAC logged about a third of human emissions during the pause. You seem to forget that I noted at the same time that temperature rises had stalled twice in the 20th Century.

Something prevents you from seeing logical arguments against the likelihood of outlier estimates of sensitivity are not in fact arguments against the validity of climate science.

I chalk it down to the same vacuity that has Oreskes calling Hansen a denier, McKibben calling Obama a denier and (bin) Laden calling Revkin a denier.

Well, there is an alternative explanation. Instead of moral blindness it could be congenital idiocy.

Thomas W. Fuller, if you have indeed written anything worth reading involving science, evidence, data or mathematics and SI units, peer reviewed or not, I am unfortunately unable to find it anywhere in the scientific literature, gray or not, essay or not. It simply doesn't exist anywhere except in your mind. Maybe I have the wrong Fuller.

The point is simple enough: natural variability is not the forced trend. The noise is not the signal. Lukewarmers have confused this, hence their mistaken belief that CS is at the low end of the estimated range.

8c, the worth of what I have written is in the eye of the reader. Most of the work I have done involving data, mathematics and statistics is for clients and is not published. My commentary strives to be written for laypersons and would not serve as any type of testimony for expertise. But then, I am not a scientist and don't claim to be expert. I have just followed the debate for a long time.

BBD, I don't recall at any time arguing that variability is part of the forced trend. Since you seem to be unable to comprehend what I do write, I suppose I should not be surprised to see you inventing things that you can attribute to me.

That you feel free to pronounce my belief about ECS mistaken, I have no doubt that not just the world of climate science, but indeed the Nobel Foundation as well, will beat a path to your door.

Unless they decide, as I did years ago, that you're a buffoon that mistakes an authoritative tone for actually knowing something.

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Eli Rabett

Eli Rabett, a not quite failed professorial techno-bunny who finally handed in the keys and retired from his wanna be research university. The students continue to be naive but great people and the administrators continue to vary day-to-day between homicidal and delusional without Eli's help. Eli notices from recent political developments that this behavior is not limited to administrators. His colleagues retain their curious inability to see the holes that they dig for themselves. Prof. Rabett is thankful that they, or at least some of them occasionally heeded his pointing out the implications of the various enthusiasms that rattle around the department and school. Ms. Rabett is thankful that Prof. Rabett occasionally heeds her pointing out that he is nuts.